Tag Archives: China

I see myself in my mirror wearing a red tunic edged with gold stitching. From my neck hangs an elaborate necklace with hamsas hanging from it: There’s one large hamsa at my heart center, then a smaller one hanging from that one. More hamsas come down the sides of the necklace. I look at myself in wonder.

When I woke, I reached over to my bedside table where I keep a variety of lovely objects, including a large metal hamsa and a tiny silver one on a red silk bracelet cord. Except the clasp on the bracelet broke long ago, so I keep it by my bedside and not on my wrist.

When I dressed, I put the hamsas in my pocket and rushed off to teach then to meet my friend, DNMNK in Cambridge for our Passover festivities.

We had an hour or so before we needed to start preparing our salad and dessert for the community seder we’d been invited to, so I convinced him to come with me on a little shopping trip.

As we walked along the Charles River, I pulled the hamsas from my pocket and told DNMNK my dream. He asked me what I thought the dream meant. “I have no idea,” I said. The red tunic, he said, reminded him of a Chinese garment. “Red in China means luck,” he added.

That’s funny, I said, remembering that before bed that night I’d spoken to a friend who I’d first met years ago at workshop about intuition. At that workshop, we played a game of turning to a stranger (which she was at the time) and saying what animal they remind us of. My new friend said I remind her of a panda. I hadn’t recalled that incident until she reminded me on the phone just before I dreamed of the red tunic. “Where do pandas live, Japan?” I asked her on the phone. “They’re usually associated with China,” she said.

“Maybe,” I told DNMNK, “that’s why I dreamed of a Chinese-style red tunic.”

We turned to go into Harvard Square to find a cord on which to hang my large gold Hamsa. We stepped into a charming store where I showed the saleswoman my charm and asked her if she had a cord she could sell me. She snipped a length of red cord from a skein and handed it to me. She asked me about the hamsa and I told her my dream.

“No charge,” she said, “now that I know that story.” I thanked her, and told her I hoped the hamsa, which is a symbol of luck and protection, would bring some luck her way.

At the next store, a bead shop, I asked the saleswoman if she had a clasp for my red cord. While we were at it, I asked if she could fix the clasp on my hamsa bracelet. I walked out of that store newly adorned with my two hamsas, one around my neck, the other on my left wrist.

I joked to DNMNK that now we had to shop for a red tunic with gold trim. He reminded me of the time and we went home, prepared for the seder, and went on our way: me wearing my hamsas with a black print dress and my red Chinese earrings (which I’d put on that morning before I even thought about the connection between my dream tunic and China).

When we arrived at the seder we met DNMNK’s friend A, an elegant woman who was wearing … a red tunic with gold trim. It looked almost exactly like the one in my dream. I admired her shirt and she told me she had no idea why she’d put it on that evening. She almost never wears it, she said, and it wasn’t what she’d planned to put on, but at the last minute …

I enjoyed the coincidence and had a lovely time at the seder. I went home tired and sated.

When I woke the next morning I stretched my arms and yawned. But something caught my eye. On my left forearm I saw a little white sticker with print on it. It hadn’t been there when I went to sleep I was certain. Without my glasses I couldn’t read the words so I held my arm out to DNMNK to read for me:

“Made in China,” he said aloud.

We laughed over the strange appearance of the sticker after all our talk the previous afternoon and evening about China. Neither of us could fathom where the sticker might have come from.

Either way, I marveled at the string of synchronicities, made, I suppose, in China!

(Now, if only I could go to sleep tonight, and wake wearing that beautiful red and gold tunic!)